


Tell Me Where I've Been

by kyanve



Category: Final Fantasy IV: The After Years
Genre: Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 10:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2385251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyanve/pseuds/kyanve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some off-camera-scenes threaded through things - Kain has never been as good at fooling people as he thought he was, and the best way to find out how well others really know you is to hear what they say when you're not around.  Ceodore's also smart enough to put together a few edges and get increasingly frustrated with a lack of explanations.  (Tag for some dead bodies in a flashback.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me Where I've Been

There was no blood when the other spear struck home; he felt the impact, there was the gap of a half-beat of shock that should’ve given way to pain and red everywhere.

Instead, there was cold, and everything going numb. His hands went stiff, refusing to respond, and his own spear clattered to the ground; the doppelganger’s spear seemed to have turned to black and shadow where it’d hit. It didn’t seem like it should be solid, but around the numb it move and felt like there was something impaling him when the double dropped the spear and planted a foot on his chest to pull it out. 

Whatever had been trying to talk to him, there was a detached awareness of it as some faint sense of distress. 

He’d been afraid that it would be stronger than him; he’d been right. 

He tried to reach for where his spear had fallen, a feeble gesture of stubbornness, that at least he’d be trying to fight to the last. Even if the double’s spear point hadn’t nudged in the way at his throat, he wouldn’t have been able to reach.

He froze, waiting, expecting it to strike to finish things; instead, there was a quiet, smug “Feh”, and the double turning to walk out.

That wasn’t how it was supposed to work. It was his trial, the double was everything he hated about himself, if he died wasn’t it supposed to die with him? He tried to lift off the ground and failed, a cough that had been meant as a protest. 

“Oh, don’t worry, this hardly the end. In fact, I’m going to do everything you ever wanted, but were too weak for.”

There was a pressure-pop when it left the shrine, and he blacked out on the dim tugging of that other voice trying to hold his attention somewhere just outside of what he could hear, some other force grasping at bits of memory.

_…can’t end like this…help them…._

**********************************************************************

 

The dragon had angled off to a courtyard on the other side of the castle instead of the tower balcony; by the time he’d managed to make it there, Skieran was sprawled out on the stone, and his father had apparently barely gotten out of the saddle, surrounded by white robes. There was a smell of smoke lingering around them that didn’t entirely smell right for dragonfire, and his father was brooding, a hunched glower that made him hesitate to even try to go near. 

The dragoon huffed, moving to pull away from the white mage that was tending to him; Skieran lifted his head off the ground, neck snaking around to block the rider from walking away with a rumble.

“Don’t give me that.” He glared right back at the wyvern; the white mage shrank away, and Kain remembered overhearing them talk - “ _Oh the dragon’s easy, it’s Ricard you have to worry about taking your arm off._ ” 

Skieran wasn’t budging, the rumble growing to a growl and a wisp of smoke. 

“…Fine.” Ricard leaned back against the saddle, arms crossed; the wyvern gave a satisfied snort and settled his head back on the rock. The white mage waited a moment, taking the dragon’s reactions as the cue that it was safe to go back to whatever he’d been doing. 

Kain settled sitting against the wall to wait, wooden staff propped between his knees with the end against the wall.

It took a while for the white mages to disperse and Skieran to lever back up to sitting more upright; Kain got to his feet, stopping hesitantly halfway across the courtyard. His father paused crossing the courtyard, looking down at him.

“I don’t have time for this.” Skieran leaned over to headbutt him in the back, almost knocking him off balance, punctuated with a low, rumbling cough sound. Ricard glowered back, another short staredown starting with the dragon not budging. “Opinionated today, aren’t you?”

The dragon’s mouth opened as he gave a sharp, rattling, half-voiced noise, before his jaws snapped shut with a click of teeth, flopping back over with no intention of budging out of the courtyard.

Ricard shook his head, turning back and motioning to Kain without looking. “Come on.” 

The only problem with catching him coming in like that was that it always meant any practice and teaching came with him being more prone to communicating corrections with the butt of his spear; bruises for “You left an opening, cover that”, and getting an ankle shoved so he’d fall instead of “You’re off balance”. It was a worse day for it, the kind where “attention too focused on target” got his shins barked with his legs swept out from under him for not watching, the small staff he’d been using clattering to the ground next to him.

His ribs ached, in more than one place, there was another bruise across his back he could feel, his fingers still stung where he’d been caught across the knuckles once, and the blow to his shins _hurt_ ; he choked back a whine, burying his face in his arm and staying put on the ground. 

“C’mon. Get up.” There was a nudge at his side with the spearbutt; he didn’t move. The second nudge caught one of his bruises, and he flinched, trying not to make a sound at it and failing. “…Stay down like that when you’re older and it won’t be the blunt end poking you.” 

“Sn’t matter.” He kept his face buried in his arm; it was easier to hide that he was trying not to cry that way. 

“Yes, it does.” Another nudge. He tried to growl, but it came out way too high-pitched. 

He heard a sigh, and his father’s footsteps towards the dragon; he moved just enough to peek over. Ricard was hooking his spear into a harness on the saddle, Skieran giving him an uncertain look; he buried his face back before his father turned back towards him. 

There wasn’t anything said, just heavy gauntlets picking him up off the ground. “Come on. I’ll show you why it matters.” There wasn’t any opening to protest if he’d wanted to; after a small squirm of surprise, he settled to stay quiet as he was carried over to the saddle. Skieran stayed still and watched while Ricard situated himself, setting Kain in front of him and pulling up a few side straps that were normally clipped out of the way, a simple half-harness to make sure a passenger stayed put. 

When the last one clicked, Skieran turned and launched into the air, clearing the castle wall in a couple strong wingbeats. 

There was nothing said for the good two hours they were in the air; he tried to focus on the ground below, picking out streams and where there were towns instead of where the riding straps were putting pressure on bruises or worrying about what he’d done wrong and where they were going. His father had gone oddly calm and distant, staying silent and still in the saddle with his focus off somewhere else. There was smoke rising from somewhere further out, and it was the direction the wyvern was aiming for; as they drew closer, it was starting to disperse, hanging aftermath without anything actively on fire. 

Skieran circled into the side of the town where it looked the worst, some of the houses and buildings down to scorched husks; there were only a few people standing, and while they looked up as the dragon came in, they quickly returned to their work, tugging someone off the ground onto a cart. It took a couple seconds after to catch up that there was an arm ending in a reddened stump around the elbow, that the plain shirt was dark around the bottom half because it was bloodsoaked; it wasn’t the only dead body in the area, and he wasn’t sure if the severed hand not far from where Skieran had landed belonged to that one or a different one. 

The dragon had dropped down to the ground, Ricard undoing the straps; the smell made the infirmary on a bad day seem like nothing, and while he’d seen a corpse carried out of there before, it was always covered.

Being set on the ground was enough to jar that into scrambling for somewhere to throw up that was at least away from Skieran.

When he caught his breath to look up, his father was leaning against Skieran’s side waiting, face grimly neutral. He stumbled back, and had a canteen pushed into his chest without a word; he grabbed it with both hands and stared down at it, feeling queasy enough that even water seemed dubious. 

“This is why it matters.” He looked up from the canteen at movement, his father’s hand sweeping out to indicate the burned out buildings and dead villagers. “When you’re old enough to fight, if you lose, this happens.” 

He swallowed hard with a nod, following the gesture and trying not to get sick again.

“You like the castle the way it is, right? You have friends there?”  
He looked up at his father with another mute nod, perfectly happy to take his attention off the ruins.

“Throw your life away, and this is what it’ll be - the castle, the servants and staff, that girl you hang around, all of it.” 

He looked down to focus on the canteen; he wasn’t sure if there was anything left to throw up, but it was too easy of a mess of images right now and he was sure he’d find out if he thought about it too much. 

“This is why you can’t give up. You lose, and other people pay for it.” 

*****************************************************************************

_….can’t give up….help them….._

Consciousness didn’t feel any better than it had before he passed out; he almost wished it would hurt more, it’d be easier to parse than the hollow numb that was flooding everything.

 _You lose and other people pay for it._

Everything he’d ever wanted. He knew what had left the shrine and where that went; it was why he’d been afraid of himself enough to go hermit on the mountain, not for what might happen to him, but for what he might do to others if he lost control; everything awful he saw in the mirror. Of course it hadn’t ended with him dying, he’d never been afraid of that, he’d always been afraid of what would happen to everyone else, so losing to what he feared meant …

Everyone else.

He managed to push to his feet; destroying what had gotten lose might kill him, but he couldn’t let that go.

It was a semiconscious autopilot-focus to get back to his camp, gather what he’d been wearing when he wasn’t using his armor, and pack to go; everything was numb, hollow, he was grasping to keep a train of thought, and starting down the mountain was driven by a litany of names turned into a cadence, something to focus on to keep moving.

Cecil. Rosa. Palom and Porom would be in Mysidia and in the path. Cid. 

He couldn’t leave them to pay for his failure. 

*******************************************************************************  
In a way, he was almost thankful for the pursuit; it meant they’d needed to keep a pace unforgiving enough that Ceodore didn’t have any time for questions, argument, or brilliant ideas like “go back and try to find out what’s wrong with Dad”. After they’d made it to the other side of the cliffs, for a few minutes he almost thought ‘we made it alive’ and Ceodore starting to realize he was capable meant that maybe he’d dodged that one.

And then the kid had to go and ask about his goal.  
He didn’t answer the question about who exactly he was after; he didn’t need to, and even keeping an unforgiving pace heading out of the foothills only seemed like delaying the inevitable now that Ceodore had reason to focus on him and not on the destination. 

And unfortunately, he was not dumb enough to maintain that pace when the terrain started giving away to the desert.

The silence when he found a spring with some shade was not the quiet of peace, it was the quiet of him getting stared at waiting for answers. 

“So. Did you see any sign of Dad?” 

He froze in the middle of refilling the canteen; of course Ceodore would have figured out to change tack on him. “Something’s wrong, it’s pretty obvious; ‘King’s orders’ and all that.” 

Ceodore folded his arms with a frown. “You were in a big hurry to get out of there; what did you find?”

And that was him taking after the parent he wasn’t asking about. “He’s not himself. I’m not sure what’s going on, and I wasn’t about to stick around to find out the hard way.”

The teen winced, gaze suddenly going back the way they’d come. “…You weren’t going to do anything? Find what was controlling him or if it was even him?”

He gave a faint noise of frustration under his breath, rocking back on his heels with the canteen in one hand. “It was him, and that’s why I didn’t want to go fishing for what was controlling him.”

“…What?” There was an edge of anger in the confusion.

“Do you think _you’d_ have a chance against something that managed to overcome him? Because I know I wouldn’t.” Not with his power off somewhere else doing god only knows what.

“Maybe! We’d know for sure if we hadn’t run away!”

He looked up flatly. “Let’s not repeat history that closely, alright?”

Ceodore gave a small noise of frustration. “Cagnazzo stayed in control _until_ they managed to get in and confront him; we were in, we could’ve-“

“Your father had two mage prodigies who were already stronger than half of Baron’s mages put together _and_ Sage Tellah with him when he fought Cagnazzo. He had a lot more power and experience behind him than you do, and I am _not_ capable of a tenth as much as the others he had with him..”

“But you said to not repeat-“

“Wrong part of history, kid.”, he growled, focusing his attention back on refilling their store of water. “Cecil wasn’t the first one to try confronting Cagnazzo, he was just the one that succeeded. We'd need backup and a plan to have a chance.” There was a faint, half-voiced sound, Ceodore almost saying something cut off; it trailed, and whatever he was thinking, he was keeping quiet, just watching with a clear expression of confusion and turning things over.

*************************************************************

 

By the time they reached Damacyan, he’d gotten oddly used to things being missing; that even if he wanted to try to explain things, his own name was out of reach in his mind, anything that would’ve been an identifier or clue turning to ash and smoke the second he tried to pin it down in reference to himself. 

As much as he was putting effort into trying to keep the hood down and a couple scarves up to obscure his face, he wasn’t doing a good job at it, but apparently his identity really was missing. He hadn’t been sure with Porom, he’d never been around her enough to probably be that familiar, Edward hadn’t seen him in years, Cecil was under something else’s control and the few people they’d passed by in Baron had been focused on Ceodore; Cid not doing more than an occasional moment of frustrated deja-vu with no recognition confirmed that it wasn’t just lack of familiarity and distractions, he couldn’t identify himself and neither could anyone else. Kain wasn’t him, Kain was the Dragoon that’d just attacked Damacyan. 

It went far enough that as long as he was staying quiet and off to the side, most people seemed to half forget he was even there.

He wasn’t sure if it was unsettling or comforting that Cid, who had known him since he was small, was not surprised to hear about the attack. In fact, the old engineer seemed to be having a hard time finding a more vehement reaction than frustrated disappointment, even if he was focused on getting the ship going at first. 

“Nah, he wouldn’t hurt Rosa. Cecil, on the other hand…” 

The flinch at how offhand and naturally Cid made that comment was apparently another of those reactions that couldn’t make it past the back of his mind.

Ceodore, on the other hand, was mildly horrified. “But - haven’t they been friends since they were kids?” 

Cid sighed, doing a last scan over the rigging, and leaned on the railing; even if they were racing to catch up, it was still a bit of a flight between Damacyan and Baron. “Let me tell you about how I first met your father.” He folded his arms in front of him. “I was at the dock working on this ship; the late King and Kain’s father, Ricard, were there to check up on how the fleet was and make plans. I’d heard the King’d adopted some orphan, but I’d had my hands too full to’ve gotten into the main castle proper much except to sleep, and he was all of nine or ten.” There was a pause as the engineer glanced over at a sound from wing-sails; whatever it was, it apparently wasn’t too worrying. “Next thing we know, there’s this streak bolting in to try to hide in part of the engine. I don’t think he’d even realized there were people there, it took him a minute to notice me staring at him all bruised up; he started babbling and it took a few minutes to get him to breathe enough to make out a word he was saying.” Cid inclined his head flatly. “He was panicking that Kain was going to kill him, and rambling about how Kain’d been calling him a coward and a liar and pretty much everything horrible under the sun. I look over, and the King’s just looking at Ricard, who’s got his face buried in his hands like the whole thing wasn’t a surprise to them at all.” 

Ceodore blinked, raising a hand with a look of confusion; apparently Cecil and Rosa hadn’t gone into some of those stories.

“Ricard finally just walked over to one of the Redwings’ racks for a lighter practice sword, waved Cecil over and shoved it in his hand; told him that if Kain was picking on him, to fight back, that Kain deserved any bruises and welts he got out of it, and that Kain’d learn to respect Cecil and back off on picking dumb fights if he got his ass kicked enough for it. Three years later an’after Ricard died, they were still at each other’s throats like cats and dogs, and Kain was just about always the one that started it; didn’t stop until Rosa finally snapped and started threatening Kain whenever he so much as looked like he was going to be an ass about something. Didn’t really lay off, just turned into them competing and butting heads trying to outdo each other; that didn’t tip into something that’d be called a friendly rivalry ‘till they’d had a few times out in the field needing to rely on each other. Speakin’ honestly, I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I’m startin’ to think that maybe letting Kain go off to be alone with his own head for that long wasn’t such a good idea after all; too much time away from anything that’d ground him out, y’know?” He gestured off with one hand the direction of the ship they were chasing.

That was a story Cid had never told him, and he half suspected his father had enforced him not hearing about it; if he’d known back then that Cecil’d started turning around and standing up to him because someone else had encouraged him to, it would’ve made things worse. 

Ceodore frowned, looking away. “…Dad always said Kain was one of his closest friends, and that he’d trust Kain with his life…” 

“He did, and I know there’s crap I don’t think Kain would’ve gotten into when everything went wrong before if he didn’t trust Cecil to come after him and do something about it. People aren’t ‘good people’ or ‘bad people’, kiddo; they’ve got both in’em. Kain’s an arrogant bastard, but if he didn’t have enough ego to get all jealous and obnoxious and pissy, he wouldn’t have the pride t’throw himself into fighting half that hard to protect what’s important to’im. Normally I’d figure Cecil and Rosa together’d be able to knock some sense back into him, but if somethin’s wrong with Cecil and Kain’s blowing off Rosa….” Cid frowned, and levered back up wearily to return to tending the ship, leaving the point dangling.

Ceodore stayed quiet by the mast for a while, then wandered over to where he was sitting, leaning on the railing nearby without looking directly at him.

“…You said you were going to kill him.” The kid was much better about self-doubt than Cecil had been at his age, but he’d definitely picked up worrying about others more than himself.

“I have to stop him. I can’t let him do this.” Lose and other people pay.

“Sometimes when it was quiet, Dad used to just ….sit in the window where he could see the Devil’s Road… he said he was waiting, just in case Kain finally came back…”

He leaned on the railing, watching the mountain ahead without a word.

“…I heard the stories, about the last time the other moon came out. Everyone said that… even when he was being controlled, and ordered to, Kain refused to kill Dad…”

He shook his head quietly. “…Things were different, then; this isn’t some other control he’s fighting.” That and Rosa yelling at him had been enough to enforce that particular check, one that obviously wasn't going to help now.

“Then what is it?” Ceodore finally did look over at him miserably. “You know what’s going on, I know you do.”

He opened his mouth, hand raised helplessly; even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t answer. He gave up with a faint headshake. “…I’ll tell you everything when this is over.” 

That earned him a dull look and a weary eyeroll. There were a few minutes of quiet with the land passing beneath them. “….So…who are you?”

He propped his chin on one hand, elbow on the railing, shoulders hunched; it was a question that came up now and then on the trip, and he’d gotten used to tuning out the dry glare that followed a lack of answer.

“…There’s been things about everyone that you knew about that you’d have to have been close to know, and - after you pulled me out of the castle. You said something about if we’d gone in and confronted Dad, about Cagnazzo and not repeating history.” Ceodore was being too focused, and he didn’t like where this was going.

“Yeah?”

“…Nobody knew what happened to Kain after Mist. Mom said he wouldn’t even talk to her about it.” It was flat and pointed. “How do you know everyone?”

At least when they were walking, he could distract the kid by picking up the pace, or holding up a hand for quiet and waiting for a sometimes-imaginary ‘something we’d rather avoid’ to pass; on the airship there really wasn’t any way to dodge. “It’s a long story.”

The dull stare came back. “…Let me guess, you’ll tell me when it’s over.”

“Exactly.” 

Ceodore sighed, and stepped back from the railing to pace the deck. He knew he was still getting dodgy looks, and he couldn’t really blame the kid, either. Cid had taken over trying to get the ship going a bit faster and was preoccupied with catching up, and he’d gone back to being mostly forgotten, left to try to sort out how he felt about Cid’s reaction; horrified, upset, or angry was easy, but the matter of fact shrug, as if it’d been something Cid had almost expected…

Had he really been that transparent?


End file.
